mile high€¦ · been a travel magazine publisher, logging close to two million flying miles...
TRANSCRIPT
MILE HIGH HEALTHY HEALTHY HEALTHY
The Frequent Traveler’s Roadmap to Eating, Energy, Exercise and a Balanced Life.
&MILE HIGH&MILE HIGH HEALTHY& HEALTHY
J A Y N E M C A L L I S T E R , M A
“Read this book now! Or learn these wise travel lessons the hard way.”—Bill Ianni
MILE HIGH HEALTHY&MILE HIGH&MILE HIGH& HEALTHY& HEALTHY
The Frequent Traveler’s Roadmap to Eating, Energy, Exercise and a Balanced Life.
J A Y N E M C A L L I S T E R , M A
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter One Healthy Eating On The Road
12
Chapter TwoWhy Frequent Travelers Really Need To Exercise
42
Chapter ThreeFinding Time To Exercise
56
Chapter Four Fueling For Energy
76
Chapter Five Jet Lag and Jet Stress
96
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Six Sleep
114
Chapter Seven How To Avoid Getting Sick While Traveling
128
Chapter Eight Stress And Resilience
152
Epilogue173
Sources 174
Acknowledgements182
FOREWORD
1
FOREWORDIf you’re one of a growing number of travelers who frequently finds yourself in an airport or airplane, on the road, rails or even in a yak cart, then Mile High and Healthy is a page-turn-ing trip you need to take.
Jayne McAllister has been a self-professed “road warrior” for much of her extensive career. While reviewing this book I have grown to know her a bit better and have found her to be a person who enjoys—maybe even thrives— on the adventure of travel. I believe she has found, however, during those many years of extensive travel, that the thrill of adventure diminish-es when the travel becomes a routine part of one’s work.
Roald Amundsen, the esteemed Norwegian explorer and lead-er of the first successful expedition to the South Pole, famously crystalized this point saying: “Adventure is just bad planning.” I am absolutely sure that Amundsen and all of those many
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participants of that arduous two-year exploration had more than their share of adventure. I am equally sure that they must have all shared the longing, the aching—at some point even the need—to just get to the South Pole as e�ciently, prompt-ly (dare I write comfortably?) as humanly possible. At some point in the journey they must have just wanted to get there and get back home without adventure.
In this book, Jayne o�ers a unique source of information for all of those travelers who may just want to get there and get back home as e�ciently as possible. This is also a treasure trove of information for those less frequent travelers, hoping for a smidgen of adventure, but wanting to minimize the joys of jet lag; traveler’s diarrhea; and/or airline mismanagement during their voyage.
Jayne has worked in travel for much of her career. She has been a travel magazine publisher, logging close to two million flying miles during her work. She has been a guest speaker on Fox and ABC News as well as national radio and television talk shows as a travel wellness expert. She is the founder and man-ager of the Business Travel Wellness Conference.
I first met her as a student in my Anatomy and Physiology class at Indian River State College in Vero Beach, FL. She very quickly demonstrated a level of interest, aptitude and academ-ic authority that, quite frankly, I simply wasn’t used to. Had I known that she was a Cambridge graduate with a BA and MA degree in languages, I may not have been quite as surprised at her relentless attention and studiousness but would have still been impressed.
When she asked me to review the medical and scientific accuracy of this book I was honored and genuinely interest-ed. I have always been thrilled with the planning and process
3
of traveling. I have also traveled extensively throughout my career but more on the adventurous end of the spectrum than the “road warriors” of business world today.
I served in the United States Army for 24 years as a research physiologist and an anesthesiologist participating in travel-re-lated research and medical treatment of our soldiers. While stationed at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmen-tal Medicine in Natick, MA, we investigated factors associated with rapid deployment to extreme environmental conditions. While serving as an anesthesiologist in Afghanistan we would often have very real travel concerns related to transport of our patients.
While assuredly a bit more peripheral in the study of trav-el than Jayne, I have been thrilled to be associated with the writing of this very practical and useful resource, and I am con-fident in assuring it as a scientifically and medically reliable book.
Happy—safe and comfortable—travels.
James W. Agnew, MD, PhD
INTRODUCTION
5
INTRODUCTIONI’ve been destined to travel since I was two years old and used to accompany my grandfather on work trips for British Rail. With sandwiches and a soda pop carefully packed by Grandma, I learned at an early age the cliché that it’s about the journey not the destination. I would later learn that for all of the wonderful things that travel brings—experiencing other cultures, seeing new worlds and exotic people, expanding one’s mind—there are some serious costs that go along with it, and some of these have nothing to do with the price of airline tickets and hotels.
Basically what I learned was this: Your mind is not the only thing that expands when you travel regularly. Let’s fast-for-ward 20 years:
I’d graduated from Cambridge with a degree in modern lan-guages and had spent a lot of time in France, Spain and Egypt,
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plus an entire year teaching English in a Sudanese government school. My sandwich and soda had been upgraded thanks to the amazing variety of food my travels a�orded me. But as my horizons expanded, so did my waistline and derrière! Yes, my career grew and so did my appetite. Moving to a new country on my own, I filled the void in my personal life with food and packed on 20 pounds thanks to my nomadic existence.
Finally, I decided to go on a diet: I skipped meals, really easy to do when you’re traveling. I ate cookies for breakfast, pasta for lunch, had just a glass of wine for dinner. Believe it or not, this worked, although I’d go to bed starving every night. I moved on to my “maintenance” plan of lattes and candy bars until dinner, which was often with clients (I was selling advertising for international publications). I’d order what I thought was a healthy meal and wash it down with wine and very little water.
At this point, I looked slim, but I wasn’t healthy. I was in my 20s, and my idea of balancing work life and personal life was putting in 12-hour days, then meeting friends for drinks. Even at that age, such a lifestyle couldn’t be sustained without consequences. I had very little energy and could barely get out of bed in the morning. Lancôme stock did great thanks to my voluminous skincare purchases, but I lost my glow anyway. My hair was dull, too. I didn’t realize that my entire being had lost its sparkle. At the time, I wasn’t linking my dining choices to my mental and physical states.
My wake-up call came when I was diagnosed with osteopenia. I was 39 years old, a publisher of an inflight magazine traveling through North America, Europe and the Caribbean 180 days a year. Osteopenia is the precursor to osteoporosis, the loss in bone density that leads to painful fractures and even death in elderly people. I was too young for this diagnosis.
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My mother and grandmother had osteoporosis, but I’d never given it any thought. I lived in ignorant bliss under the mistak-en assumption that I was “healthy.” Yet here was my doctor explaining that I had the bones of someone 15 years older. If left unchecked, the dowager hump that was beginning to form would take on a whole new visual as my spine rounded over in hyper-kyphosis. Eventually, I’d be walking with a cane, ter-rified to sneeze in case I broke a rib. Back then Fosomax was the standard prescription, and it had vile side e�ects including nausea, dizziness and joint swelling.
I didn’t want the illness, yet I didn’t want the pharmaceutical cure, either. Surely there had to be a healthy way to overcome this. My doctor told me it would take at least two years to turn matters around on my own, at which point he would insist on the brutal medication.
As I researched the causes of bone density loss, many familiar faces showed up: alcohol, ca�eine, smoking (I’d smoked in my early 20s), too much animal protein, too much dairy, and lack of weight-bearing exercise. My regimen of swimming, smoking and lattes wasn’t looking too good.
I had to change. I had no choice. I sought foods that would increase my bone density and gradually changed my eating habits across the board. I cut back on alcohol. I began doing weight-bearing exercise daily no matter where I was in the world. Before long my energy increased, my eyes started to sparkle again and my skin cleared up.
Finally, I took a leap of faith and I left my corporate job to pur-sue my new-found passion for health and fitness. Despite liv-ing on a Caribbean island at the time, I left home, husband and cat, for a yearlong sojourn in New York City to study Pilates, integrative nutrition and transformational coaching.
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The net result is that, today, my weight is stable, my sugar cravings have disappeared and I have more energy than ever. I’m able to run two businesses without undue stress. I travel frequently and when I’m not traveling, I’m planning my next trip because I miss it so much. Jet lag is nonexistent for me. I eat out all the time when I travel, and I enjoy fine wine. I sleep between eight and nine hours a night and find plenty of time for my friends, my garden and my books. I stay in shape by doing only exercise that I love.
To bring things full circle, I proved my doctor completely wrong by drastically reducing the osteopenia in my spine and eliminating it from my hip in just eight months.
It was only natural that I would want to share my hard-won knowledge of how to combine two of my greatest passions—travel and wellness. After all, I’ve experienced first-hand all the traps, dead ends, fads and tricks that don’t work. I’ve spent years studying and practicing what does work, and learning how to make these techniques as convenient for the traveler as possible.
Don’t worry—this doesn’t mean packing kale and quinoa salad in your hand luggage or eschewing Bordeaux when you’re out for dinner with clients. Being Mile High and Healthy is about having it all.
Many people assume business travelers lead a glamorous lifestyle: tooling around in first class; flying all over the world; racking up frequent flyer points; entertaining clients with fabulous dinners out; soaking up rays between meetings and, basically, barely working for a living.
Consider a more realistic scenario: You get up at 4 a.m. to make a flight that is delayed. You fly to a city for a one-day
9
meeting because your employer is too cheap to pay for a hotel the night before. You arrive at your meeting about ready for a nap yet anxious to make a good impression, so you’re fired up on ca�eine and cookies. You skipped lunch because there was no meal service on the plane, and you had to sprint through the airport at record speeds to make it to your meeting on time.
With the meeting concluded, you check into your hotel 30 minutes before your business dinner. You barely have time to clean up, never mind rest or exercise. Half a bottle of claret and too much rich, expense-account food later, you crawl into bed. Sleep eludes you thanks to indigestion, the noise of the ice machine, and the snoring of the guest in the next room.
And you realize you forgot to call home…
On top of this, there is the toll of being away from home and missing important family events. This is far from the picture of health.
Mile High and Healthy is about having the energy to get through just such a day without crashing and burning. It allows you to make the best dining choices available to you wherever you are. You will learn how to get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep and how to stick to a consistent exer-cise program wherever you are on the planet. All of which will be vital when it comes to keeping relationships with loved ones on an even keel even if you’re not there for the biggest successes and emergencies. It’s about having the wherewithal to juggle eight balls at once but to have fun while you’re doing so.
Each chapter of this book addresses a particular challenge faced by road warriors the world over. You can dip into se-lected sections if you need specific information. That said,
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most frequent travelers are A types, so enjoy the full gamut as you go from cover to cover. Mile High and Healthy will show you how to:
« Eat the right foods on the run.
« Exercise consistently, even in a plane, train, automo-bile or your typical shoebox of a Parisian hotel room.
« Defy circumstances and enjoy su�cient sleep.
« Find time for relaxation that doesn’t include surfing the web.
« Choose how to handle stress.
« Wave goodbye to jet lag.
« Stay lovingly connected with family and friends.
« Maintain a strong immune system.
Sound like a tall order? Follow the steps in this book and you’ll find yourself on the road to optimum health and to having it all.
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// DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU? //
«You have a hard time losing or maintaining weight on the road because you’re eating out so often and/or entertaining clients frequently.
«When your weight goes up, you spend all your time trying to compensate for it when you get home.
«Every day you try to include exercise in your sched-ule but it gets crowded out because you have an early start, you’re in meetings or on a plane.
«It takes all you have to muster enough energy to get through your day.
«Jet lag wipes you out for days, and you can never get on the right time schedule.
«You feel like the Michelin Man—your belly has pu�ed up and your feet are swollen—after every trip, you have more gas than the Goodyear Blimp.
«You spend your spare time working.
«You spend more time with your phone than your family.
«The concept of self-care is completely alien to you, as is the subtle art of being able to say “no.”
HEALTHY EATINGON THE ROAD
H EALTHY EATI N G / / 13
HEALTHY EATINGON THE ROAD
/ / P R E PA R E T O TA K E O F F / /“Excess weight. Spiking blood
sugar. Fatigue due to airport junk food. This chapter provides the tools to help you lose the things
that are keeping you down.”
C H A P T E R 1
14 // M I LE H I G H AND H EALTHY
The frequent traveler is a survivor, a model of e�ciency and a master of adaptation. You can spot one in an air-port instantly. They are usually more formally dressed than other travelers. They appear confident—they know where they are, where they’re going and how to get there as gracefully and e�ciently as possible. Next to these road warriors, almost everybody else appears to be an amateur.
But beneath the professional façade, a dark secret lurks. I know that secret. I’m in the business of helping hard-working, globetrotting, high-achievers, and they come to me, sometimes bordering on desperation, with a secret. The secret is they feel the opposite of how they appear. They are the opposite of how they appear.
If you are one of them, I know why you’re reading this: You’re exhausted, sapped, brittle, nursing digestive dis-comfort and back pain, fighting weight gain, heaping long-term damage on your body and soul due to your brutal schedule. You feel powerless against the many bad habits bred by travel.
Mile High and Healthy has the answers you need, from diet to exercise to contending with that chronically aching back. But let’s start with the questions I’m usually asked first:
How the heck do I eat healthily on the road? What am I supposed to do when there seem to be no healthy options and I’m stuck at an airport?
How can I eat healthily when it’s all Continental break-fasts at hotels and fast food on the run?
And those enormous meals with clients at expensive restaurants where the wine flows like tap water and the usual menu amounts to a tempting list of buttered starch-
H EALTHY EATI N G / / 15
es and fatty meats—how can I stay fit and increase my energy eating under those circumstances?
The answers to these questions ulti-mately involve all the other chapters as well as this one, as Mile High and Healthy embraces a holistic approach. Still, food is the best place to start the discussion. Food is visceral. It is deli-cious. We can’t actually live without it. And it is a time-honored comfort. In fact, food sometimes seems like the only consolation when you’re hitting three cities and six meetings in two days. Hel-lo, gourmet cheeseburger!
Just hold on a minute. Back away from the friendly, airport gastro-pub with craft beers and half-pound Angus burgers with exotic aiolis and hand-cut French fries. Read on. I’m going to dive in with some specific strategies for dealing with the di�culty of maintaining a healthy diet on the road, and then later in the chapter I’ll lay out some general nutrition principles applicable in any time zone, in any airport, any time of the day or night.
Healthy eating can be an elusive specter for the fre-quent traveler: You grab the first thing you see as you dash through an airport, deal with a badly planned schedule that gives you no time to eat or discover there’s no meal service onboard, attend a business breakfast and lunch that serves donuts and pizza respectively and, finally, end your day with a heavy and very late dinner.
“…FOOD SOMETIMES
SEEMS LIKE THE ONLY
CONSOLATION WHEN
YOU’RE HITTING THREE
CITIES AND SIX MEETINGS
IN TWO DAYS. HELLO,
GOURMET CHEESEBURGER!
JUST HOLD ON A MINUTE.
BACK AWAY
FROM THE FRIENDLY,
AIRPORT GASTRO-PUB
WITH CRAFT BEERS AND
HALF-POUND ANGUS
BURGERS WITH EXOTIC
AIOLIS. READ ON. I’M
GOING TO DIVE
IN WITH SOME SPECIFIC
STRATEGIES FOR DEALING
WITH THE DIFFICULTY OF
MAINTAINING A HEALTHY
DIET ON THE ROAD…”
16 // M I LE H I G H AND H EALTHY
In this scenario, there’s no planning ahead and shopping accordingly. But you can make healthy choices based on what’s available to you at that moment, whether you’re in a hotel, airport or a catered business meeting.
In 2012, global travel company Carlson Wagonlit con-ducted a study of Stress Triggers for Business Travelers. The three highest ranking stressors—out of 100—were lost or delayed baggage (79/100), poor Internet connection at destination (77/100) and flying economy on medium or
long-haul flights (73/100), with delays a close fourth (72/100).
The same study reported that not being able to eat healthily scored 62 out of 100, higher than traveling on weekends, flying indirect versus direct and jet lag. What these factors have in common is a lack of control. In other words, frequent travelers are most fazed when they do not have control of their environment, including lack of healthy dining options.
But there’s hope—frequent travelers are really good at planning, and usually
have a plan B because plan A has a habit of going awry at a moment’s notice. Having a plan means when you’re faced with a lack of choices, you can dig into your bag of Mile High and Healthy tricks and make a confident choice around your eating without it eating away at you.
“HAVING A PLAN MEANS
WHEN YOU’RE FACED
WITH A LACK OF
CHOICES, YOU CAN DIG
INTO YOUR BAG OF MILE
HIGH AND HEALTHY
TRICKS AND MAKE A
CONFIDENT CHOICE
AROUND YOUR EATING
WITHOUT IT EATING
AWAY AT YOU.”
H EALTHY EATI N G / / 17
// PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A TRAVELER //
Knowledge is one thing, putting it into practice is another. Here are some situations that frequent travelers face every day followed by the Mile High and Healthy way of handling them.
AT THE AIRPORTFirst of all, you may have noticed things are getting
better in terms of airport food options. There’s been a revolution over the last few years as restaurants asso-ciated with celebrity chefs keep popping up worldwide: Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food at Heathrow Terminal 5; Todd English’s Bonfire at Boston’s Logan International and JFK; Tyler Florence’s Rotisserie at San Francisco; and Charles Gaig’s Michelin-starred Porta Gaig at Barce-lona’s El Prat.
These aren’t necessarily healthy eating establishments per se, but if the quality of ingredients is elevated (less processed and fresher), that’s a huge step forward. Take Vino Volo, for example—yes, it’s a wine bar located in over 20 airports in the US and Canada (in multiple terminals in some instances), but where there’s an ef-
18 // M I LE H I G H AND H EALTHY
fort to pour decent wine, food offerings tend to be more thoughtful. Vino Volo’s menu contains several healthy options, and half portions of many dishes are available.
Food trucks offer an interesting dining option. Usu-ally located in cell phone lots, you’ll find food trucks at Austin, Tampa, Cincinnati, Tucson, and San Francisco airports. Cuisines are varied, but most deliver locally sourced fresh food, plus you know there’s a fast turnover on ingredients. But keep away from hot dog and bak-ery-themed trucks.
Each November, the Physicians’ Committee for Re-sponsible Medicine releases its Airport Food Review. This handy round-up ranks the 30 busiest US airports according to their restaurants with the healthiest menu options, based on entrees featuring vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes.
The 2014 Review reported, “Seventy-five percent of restaurants at 23 of the top 30 busiest US airports offer at least one healthful, plant-based entrée.” Of course, you’re going to have to hope that if there is only one sin-gle solitary healthy dish, it’s available in your terminal.
On the other hand, you might be lucky enough to be flying out of San Francisco International where Tastes On The Fly brought the local dining scene to the airport, including the award-winning Napa Farms Market and, more recently, opened the Berkshire Farms Market at Boston’s Logan International.
Today’s traveler has multiple resources at their finger-tips. You can check out in advance what is available in your terminal and pull up menus online. For example, the sandwich chain Au Bon Pain posts menus for each of their airport locations on their website. You can learn
H EALTHY EATI N G / / 19
such useful information as the roast beef herbed cheese sandwich has 150 fewer calories than the chicken avoca-do, and they have a veggie and hummus wrap that packs a whopping 15 grams of fiber. Taking a few minutes to research what’s available in your location and order a meal in advance keeps you in control of both your time and your waistline.
If you have the budgetary option to skip the food court and head for a “real” restaurant, please do. By real restaurant, I mean an establishment that cooks food to order compared with fast-food joints that precook and preassemble their o¬erings. This makes it infinitely easier for you to order with healthy modifications, such as hold the mayo, skip the cheese or broiled rather than fried.
The onus is on you to do the homework, but you should only need to do it once for each destination. You’ll get to the point where you can look forward to dining at Rea-gan National Airport’s Legal Seafoods and enjoying the Swordfish Kabob with Quinoa.
“REDUCING FOOD TO A
NUMBER IS AN
UNHEALTHY OBSESSION.
AS LONG AS YOU EAT
A VARIETY OF UNPRO-
CESSED FOODS, YOU’LL
ACHIEVE THE RIGHT
BALANCE OF NUTRIENTS.”
20 // M I LE H I G H AND H EALTHY
8 TIPS FOR EATING HEALTHILY AT AN
AIRPORT FOOD COURTSometimes airport food courts might be the only
option that your budget and schedule allow. Nowadays they range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from cinnamon rolls to Tortas Frontera at Chicago O’Hare. Renowned local chef Rick Bayless o¬ers freshly made guacamole, homemade chips and salsa plus a bunch of di¬erent tortas. Bayless even lists the local farms from which the meat is purveyed.
But that’s the food court exception. Then there’s the real world for the rest of us. We’re in the terminal that’s o¬er-ing pseudo-Chinese and hotdogs. What to do?
1 // If you’re stuck for healthy choices, aim for simple. My favorite trio of soup, salad and sandwich can be tracked down pretty much anywhere. Of course there are caveats, like no cheese and beer soup, Caesar salads or cheesy meat-ball subs.
2 // Your salad should have an oil-based dressing and no croutons. Choose as many vegetables as possible, especially greens. Romaine tops iceberg nutritionally. Look for spin-ach and kale, too.
3 // Your sandwich should be on whole grain bread. Tuna and chicken salad in mayonnaise are out. Slices of lean meat are in. Less is more—no need to have meat and cheese, you only need one of the two for fat and protein. Al-
H EALTHY EATI N G / / 21
ways sneak in at least one veggie serving to your sandwich, even if it’s lettuce or a slice of tomato. Choose mustard over mayonnaise.
4 // Soups are an excellent option as long as they’re not full of milk and cream. Choose soups with vegetables and beans or lentils for fiber and energy. Whatever you order will probably have a lot of salt in it, so drink lots of water to flush it out before you fly.
5 // For Asian food court o¬erings, look for a vegetable dish, rice noodles, fish or a simple combo like chicken and broccoli. Ask that your dish be made to order without salt or MSG. Request less soy and oil. Always ask for brown rice, although it might not be available. If you can’t avoid starch-laden white rice, order a protein with your veggies, that way your blood sugar won’t spike as much. Miso soup and noodles in broth are good choices, but skip teriyaki because it’s both very salty and sugary.
6 // Sushi bars can be good options. Even if only white rice is available, the protein and seaweed will o¬set the e¬ects of the starch. Be warned: It’s easy to get carried away calo-rie-wise with sushi. Each piece is between 50 and 60 calo-ries. Sushi rolls are around 300 calories, assuming there are no batter-fried ingredients, like tempura.
7 // Smoothie bars are popping up in airports now. Tread cautiously: Many chain smoothie bars use packaged (meaning processed) juices with lots of hidden sugars. Take the time to read the ingredients even if you have to get to the airport five minutes sooner!
8 // Most airports have a Mexican eatery that have great options if you skip the cheese. Black beans, rice (preferably brown), guacamole, fresh salsa and a corn tortilla provide protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats.
DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU? Your idea of a vacation is sitting outside working on your laptop. You think jet lag is part of your job description. You’re exhausted all the time. Your exercise plan starts tomorrow. Healthy eating means a slice of lettuce on a ham and cheese sandwich. You spend more at Starbucks than on your groceries. You’ve slept through landing and take-off. You have four sizes of clothes in your closet.
Written by a wellness professional and veteran road warrior who digs into her own experiences and lessons learned, Jayne McAllister’s Mile High and Healthy is the perfect pit stop for frequent travelers who feel like they’ve come to the end of the road and need answers that work.
“Jayne McAllister delivers much needed advice for today’s business and leisure traveler with humour and insight in equal measure,” —Christopher
Babayode, Author, Farewell Jet Lag: Cures from a Flight Attendant.
“For myself, and my fellow academic road warriors, Jayne McAllister’s book is a manual for sanity, serenity, and well-being that puts control back into our hands.” —Professor Sarah Drakopoulou Dodd, University of Strathclyde.
“Mile High and Healthy is the next best thing to having your own personal travel wellness guru on tap wherever in the world you’re heading. From now on it’s going to be my travel companion of choice,” —Carolyn Pearson,
founder, maiden-voyage.com.
$24.95 U.S./£15.95 U.K.